The Beauty Premium

By Christopher Shea

When a photograph accompanies a job application, attractive job candidates get called back 36% more often than unattractive ones, a study finds.

But who submits a photograph with a resume? Just about everyone in Argentina, which is why two economists conducted their study in Buenos Aires.

Previous studies on the same subject have often relied on self-reported attractiveness, or on subjective evaluations. In contrast, these researchers used what they described as objective measures of beauty: facial proportions that other studies have suggested are universally fetching. First, the researchers created composite photos blending images of people in their 20s. They then manipulated features on those photos to match ratios identified as ideal (distance between pupils divided by total head width, for example —46%). For the unattractive faces, they used ratios that deviated from those norms noticeably (but not outlandishly).

During two months in 2010, the researchers sent out 2500 applications to jobs across many fields, with the resumes of the job candidates carefully matched.

10.3 % of the attractive fictional candidates got called, compared with 7.6% of the unattractive candidates — and attractive people got called sooner. Attractive member of both sexes benefited from the beauty advantage.